2019/03/19 by Judith Degen, Robert D. Hawkins, Degen, Judith +7 · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · Computer Science · #Computation and Language (cs.CL) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies #Multi-Agent Systems and Negotiation #Speech and dialogue systems
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1903.08237
openalex publication_date 2019/03/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Referring is one of the most basic and prevalent uses of language. How do\nspeakers choose from the wealth of referring expressions at their disposal?\nRational theories of language use have come under attack for decades for not\nbeing able to account for the seemingly irrational overinformativeness\nubiquitous in referring expressions. Here we present a novel production model\nof referring expressions within the Rational Speech Act framework that treats\nspeakers as agents that rationally trade off cost and informativeness of\nutterances. Crucially, we relax the assumption that informativeness is computed\nwith respect to a deterministic Boolean semantics, in favor of a\nnon-deterministic continuous semantics. This innovation allows us to capture a\nlarge number of seemingly disparate phenomena within one unified framework: the\nbasic asymmetry in speakers' propensity to overmodify with color rather than\nsize; the increase in overmodification in complex scenes; the increase in\novermodification with atypical features; and the increase in specificity in\nnominal reference as a function of typicality. These findings cast a new light\non the production of referring expressions: rather than being wastefully\noverinformative, reference is usefully redundant.\n